The Residency runs Thursday, July 23, through Sunday, July 26, at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. The long weekend offers intensive workshops with accomplished instructors, group events such as readings and discussions, a chance to share work with other dedicated writers, and a unique opportunity to bond with writers from across the state and beyond.

Registrants will spend the entire weekend in one workshop, in either fiction, poetry, or creative nonfiction. Participation is limited to the first sixteen qualified registrants in each workshop, for a total of forty-eight attendees. For more information, and to register, click here.

Which stories in our lives most demand to be told? What themes connect them? We will study the art of the personal essay, in which scraps of material with no apparent connection can be woven together to form elegant, compelling narratives. We will learn to create what John Gardner called the “fictive dream”: writing that, whether invented or true, draws readers wholly into our worlds.

Jan is the author of four nonfiction books and has published dozens of articles and essays in national magazines. Her fifth book, in progress, explores how working to benefit others can heal even the most badly broken heart. Until 2009 she concentrated on writing about the natural world and how our attachments to our landscapes—the places through which we move each day—help shape who we are.

This workshop will provide space and time for participants to generate new poems, evaluate existing poems, and engage with tool building activities and discussions to inspire revision and more writing. Our time will be divided between the critique of existing poems and the crafting of new poems. The environment in this workshop is one of support and encouragement, welcoming self-expression, and development for writers at all levels. Participants will submit three poems in advance of the workshop, all of which should not have been in a workshop elsewhere. Please be prepared to write during and outside workshop sessions, using writing prompts designed to help you “stumble to the door” and find those poems, no matter what.

Amber is the recipient of several major poetry awards, including the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, Richard Peterson Prize and Ann Stanford Prize. The author of two collections of poetry, she is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at East Carolina University.

In fiction we’re always using patterns and shapes, whether deliberately or intuitively. A character tears up her life and hits the road: Journey. An older couple stays home and an angry grandson comes to spend the week: Visitation. A husband and wife are in bed talking, remembering, and watching a movie: Onion. A character dies and everyone in the book goes to the funeral: Gathering. Using these and other shapes from Jerome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction, plus some not included in the book, this workshop will help you identify, deploy, and exploit some patterns in your fiction. We’ll also learn about character routines, emotional connect/disconnect, the unique event, lingering in your key scenes, and mashing up a model story. And as time permits, we’ll write a few short pieces using prompts.

Luke is the author of the story collection Down in the Flood, the poetry chapbooks Street and Above Floodstage, and the novel Watching TV with the Red Chinese, which was made into an independent film in 2011. He edits the journal Tar River Poetry, and is Professor of English at East Carolina University, where he has twice won his department's Excellence in Teaching award.

WINSTON-SALEM—Most people, when they turn thirty, are just getting started.

The North Carolina Writers' Network has been around long enough to become an institution: one of the nation’s oldest and largest statewide writers’ groups; one of the most accepting and accessible writers’ groups of any size, anywhere; a major presence in the cultural life of this state, and a model for literary and cultural organizations in other states.

The Network is far too young, though, to let our joints get stiff and creaky, to get too set in our ways. We have so much more to do, to be, to try. We're just getting started, too.

For that, we need your help.

This year we are asking all of our members to give $30 or More for 30 and More: a donation of $30 (or more) to make sure the North Carolina Writers’ Network is around for another thirty years (and more).

Your gift of $30 or More will help make sure that North Carolina’s writers to come will still find the community, opportunity, and excellence that they need. Your donation will help fund new and existing programs and services, and will help us shore up our operating reserve against a rainy day. Your support will help make sure that North Carolina is still the Writingest State in 2045, 2075, 2115 . . .

You can make your $30 or More donation with a credit card, here, or by calling 336-293-8844 or 919-308-3228.

Thank you for being a part of the Network’s first thirty years—or, as future members will call them, Chapter One.

The North Carolina Writers’ Network is a nonprofit 501(c) (3). For more information, visit www.ncwriters.org.

Member Login

You will not be able to log-in if your membership is expired. To renew, click here.

Book Buzz

Hats Off!

Hats Off! to John G. Hartness, publisher of Falstaff Books, who this month released We Are Not This – Carolina Writers for Equality. The anthology, a collection of thirty-one short stories, poems, and essays by North Carolina writers or writers who feel a strong tie to the Carolinas, was created as a response to HB2, the divisive “bathroom bill” passed by the NC General Assembly earlier this year. Proceeds from the sale of the anthology will be divided among NC-centric LGBTQ charities, non-profits, and lobbying organizations. The first group of organizations to receive funding will be Time Out Youth, Queen City Theatre Company, and EqualityNC.

Member Readings

The Regulator welcomes Robin Kirk for a reading and signing in celebration of the launch of her novel--and the first volume in a young-adult fantasy trilogy--The Bond. Robin Kirk is a Faculty Co-Chair of the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute and is a founding member of the Pauli Murray Project.

An epidemic of violence is sweeping the country: musicians are being murdered onstage in the middle of their sets by members of their audience. Are these random copycat killings, or is something more sinister at work? If you would like a reserved seat, please pre-purchase Destroy All Monsters by Jeff Jackson from Quail Ridge Books. They we will also have copies for sale at the event.

The Regulator welcomes award-winning journalist Douglas Bock Clark, author of The Last Whalers: Three Years in the Far Pacific with a Vanishing Way of Life, the epic story of the world's last subsistence whalers. The author will be joined in conversation with North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame inductee Allan Gurganus.